Overview

‘Presentist democracy is without a people and without nation. Rather than regimes of borders and migration, its borders are sexism and racism, homo- and transphobia, colonialism and extractivism.’ In the midst of the crises and threats to liberal democracy, Isabell Lorey develops a democracy in the present tense; one which breaks open political certainties and linear concepts of progress and growth. Her queer feminist political theory formulates a fundamental critique of masculinist concepts of the people, representation, institutions, and the multitude. In doing so, she unfolds an original concept of a presentist democracy based on care and interrelatedness, on the irreducibility of responsibilities—one which cannot be conceived of without social movements’ past struggles and current practices.

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9781839767333

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Reviews

Praise for State of Insecurity: The important contribution of this thoughtful work is to let us understand finally that precarity is not a passing or episodic condition, but a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time. -- Judith Butler Praise for State of Insecurity: A welcome short companion to critical debates on precarity, precariousness and precarization . Its first immediate value is that of bringing to anglophone audiences a collection of short and incisive texts that offer valuable insights into both critical debates and political practice on precarity, particularly around European networks and platforms. * Antipode * Praise for State of Insecurity: Lorey impresses with the scope and depth of her engagement with the concept of precariousness and the strength of her argument. * 3:AM *

This book is an assembly - a collection of voices from Germany and Spain, Italy, England, France and every country - a colourful and strong intersection of proposals in search for a (transnational and non-identitarian) democracy of the multitude and of difference, of truth and the joy of life. -- Antonio Negri, co-author of <i>Empire</i> Weaving and unweaving the political philosophy of Rousseau, Derrida, Benjamin, Foucault and Negri, Isabell Lorey assembles a constellation of debates around keywords: democracy, time, sovereignty, commune. She does so in order to systematize the discontinuous struggles that inhabit these words, the possible futures that their meanings open up, and to place them at the disposal of a queer-feminist theory that locates the strike as one of its inspirational practices. Thus an infinitive present opens up as a time of becoming, defined by the encounter of bodies, which expands the present through processes of indeterminate differentiation. By highlighting the non-democratic foundations of democracy one by one, the definition of a Presentist Democracy emerges. This is woven out of care and debt: collective care and the debts of assuming relations of interdependence. This book is a tool for continuing to nourish the desire to change everything -- Veronica Gago

Author Information

Isabell Lorey is a Queer Studies Professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and works for transversal texts, the publication platform of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies. She is the author of several books, including State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious.

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